Study: Burger King Has The Slowest Drive-Thrus, But Does A Really Good Job Of Hiding The Dumpsters

We’ve written any number of stories over the years of fights starting because a customer had to wait too long in a fast-food drive-thru lane. So according the results of a new study, impatient and easy-to-anger consumers might want to take a few deep breaths before picking up some Burger King.

Wendy’s drive-thrus were the fastest in the survey, with an average wait time of just over two minutes (129.75 seconds, for the detail-obsessed among you). McDonald’s, which one would assume would have this whole drive-thru thing down by now, clocked in at more than three minutes (188.83 seconds) for fifth place, while Burger King’s 201.33 second average left it in last place.

Burger King could also stand to improve its customer service, with only 27.4% (last place on the rankings) of the ordering experiences rated as “Very Friendly,” and 34.3% (next to last place) rating their experience as “Pleasant.” Meanwhile, BK dominated in the “Average” customer service category (29.9%) and “Rude,” with 2.8%, more than double the mean for all eateries in the survey.

On the plus side, BK was the industry leader in disguising its dumpsters. According to the survey, customers in the drive-thru line were only staring at dumpsters 66.34% of the time, much better than McDonald’s 74.9% or Wendy’s 76.7%, and worlds away from the icky 94.2% of Bojangles with visible dumpsters.